All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 69: Nice Floors

Bee spent some time sorting through and inspecting all the alchemy equipment. So far, she had been making do with her small kit and whatever glass equipment she could get from the kitchen. She had thought about trying to use some of the metal mixing bowls and other tools. Still, the books had emphatically warned her about anything other than glass.

Searching through the cabinet, she saw all the equipment listed in her books - proper measuring tubes with better tolerances than flasks, various types of distillation tubes, and vessels designed to better control temperature. This would make her alchemy so much more effective, not to mention easier. She even found a nice stand that she could put a candle under to provide a steady, constant source of heat.

Bee caught herself in the middle of wondering how she'd transport all of this back to the library. Now that she had access to an area specifically intended for alchemy, why abandon it? This place even had safety equipment built in for her peace of mind. Now that the castle was safer, or so it seemed, there was no point in doing alchemy in the library besides being able to quickly find reference texts, at least. She could just come up here when she wanted to prepare a potion or try a new recipe. Still as exciting as this discovery was, it wasn't why she came upstairs.

When the mages were still around, she had been allowed upstairs to clean, but many rooms had been shut to her. So she didn't really know the layout very well. She looked around to find Void cleaning the floor. In fact, he was actually almost done. She watched it go back and forth a couple more times at the far end of the room. The amount of dust that drifted up off the floor was significant. It seemed as if it was no longer bothering to only pick up the dirt directly underneath it like it used to.

She wondered if her master realized how time-sensitive things were. Sure, she had spent a few precious minutes looking around, but even that was less than she would have liked. She was holding herself back here in the interest of heading off any recovering demons or dissipating suppression rings. Void just didn't seem to mind at all. She went back and grabbed a couple of the flasks while it finished up the last bit of the room. With a couple of the more useful pieces tucked away, Bee waited for Void at the entrance.

—-

Oh, I see the human is done. I'm glad that Beatrice didn't decide to take very long. It was so kind of her to wait while I finished up the floor. Even if it was only a few seconds. Based on how excited she was to see this place, we would probably be coming back, and it would be important to make sure that it was clean when we did. It would give the room some extra pizazz when she opened the door. It wasn't like this was some storeroom we would never have to enter again. People usually don't care about how those look, even if I do.

We couldn't stay too long, so I did a cursory cleaning of the floor rather than a deep clean. We exited the room and continued down the right hallway. We kept trying doors, finding more closets and storage rooms. We even discovered a couple more rooms full of long tables like the first.

It wasn't until we tried nearly a dozen rooms that we found a different one. This was a room of cages, not quite like the cages that I had seen before but still similar enough. It looked like all the cages were much smaller, the largest being about 2 feet tall. The shortest was 9.6 inches.

Strangely, the material wasn't just metal. Sure there were the bars and grating were mostly made of metal, but my sensors indicated that there was some glass between each metal strip. Making it less of a cage and more of a container. Inside each one of them, there was a small bird-like thing. It was curled up into itself as though sleeping, with a strange toucan-like beak that more resembled a mouth full of sharp teeth. Closer inspection also indicated that the "feathers" weren't actually feathers at all but more visually similar to plumes of frayed thread. They were also very red. And very hot.

The cages were placed on the dark stone floor like usual. Each cage also had a ring of salt around it. The salt was formed into somewhat familiar and very complex patterns. Not the patterns of the language that I was learning from Beatrice's book, mind you. This was more like the patterns around the other cages I had cleaned up. Thinking back, it was also like the pattern that was around me when I first came to this place. I supposed that made some sense with Beatrice's story.

The patterns didn't match exactly. They were much more complex than the "normal" human language, and I had no hope of decoding them yet. Too many unique characters, and I had no frame of reference for what they meant. I was debating with myself if I should have Beatrice teach me this, too, when I asked her about reading normal letters. Just when I was considering this approach, Bee started to rub out the salt around one of the smallest cages.

I beeped in panic. Hey, you're not supposed to do that. You just told me that was a bad idea. That was kind of a hard sentiment to get across, though. At times like these, I really wished I could talk. But still, she seemed to understand. She looked down at me and smiled. "I think I've learned enough that I could probably redraw some of the simple suppression rings. At least, I hope so. I don't want to fight fire elementals. I'm just glad there aren't any greater fire demons. This castle probably would have melted if there had been any like that let loose."

After she had collected all the dust around that one cage, she started sprinkling dust from a second pouch back around it, almost exactly matching the pattern of the previous dust.

Once she finished, she stepped back. She watched the cage for a second and then frowned. She stepped forward and examined her work, pushed a few grains of salt to the side, and stepped back again. This repeated several times.

Each time the design she laid out was more and more similar to the one she had just erased. Eventually, she got stumped and moved to wipe it all away. But I knew what she was missing. I saw there were just a couple of small mistakes. And I understood why they were hard to see. They were pretty minor. I reached up with my arm, and before she could wipe away the salt, I gently pushed a few grains of salt to the left and right. It felt strange to not be cleaning up what I would have normally tagged as a mess, honestly. But now that I understood it had a purpose, I could treat it like just another strange human decoration. When I had adjusted the pattern to match my stored image of the ring, Beatrice looked at me and stepped back.

We stood perfectly still for a half second before the circle flashed blue, and Beatrice smiled. "Thank you! I didn't notice those two lines were slightly at the wrong angle. I appreciate the instruction, master."

She finished it off with a slight bow but seemed relatively happy, despite me having to correct her. This was not something I was comfortable with. I didn't really know what I was doing with this at all. The only thing I would be comfortable giving instructions on was cleaning, and this wasn't even close. In fact, this was almost the opposite of cleaning. Just because I had a good understanding of patterns and good memory banks didn't mean I was qualified to instruct her on this.

I examined the salt more closely. No longer was it just a series of piles. It seemed that the flash of blue had smoothed everything out somehow, and I could see energy trickling between each grain. Looking more closely at some of the other piles, I could see the same energy, but much more faintly. It seemed that the salt piles only lasted so long before they ran out of juice.

Beatrice stepped to the next smallest cage and made another attempt. Because the cage was slightly larger, the symbols were slightly different. Beatrice made several attempts at redrawing it a couple times; soon enough, she wiped away her patterns completely. Eventually, she got very close. I only helped a little bit at the end, but this one, too, flashed blue.

It was nice to see her making some improvements. To be honest, I didn't understand what was going on at all. The only way I was of any assistance was because I just remembered what I saw. It was far too complicated for me to begin decoding these symbols without help.

We moved on to the next one.

—

Bee was extremely happy that her master was willing to assist her in drawing the circles. She should have guessed, but who knew it would be such an expert at demonic magic? That was a relief, too, because she was pretty sure that these circles were almost entirely out of power. And fighting these fire elementals would be very difficult. They were known for their speed and destructive power. Of course, if she had a bucket of water, it wouldn't be too hard to defeat them. The trick was if she could catch them before they burned the whole place down.

After she had finished the second containment circle, she started to understand something. It was a brilliant way for her master to teach her, but the enchantments didn't just get larger as the circles grew. They had to adjust too. Various runes controlled the size and density of the power suppression field. Also, the slight emphasis on each variable was different in the way they were written. It was really complicated and subtle, but Bee felt that she was beginning to understand it.

The third cage was actually the same size as the second cage, and it only took her a couple tries to get it right. She couldn't help but pump her fist in the air when she stepped back for that one. Finally, she had laid her first real containment circle all by herself.

This was a huge achievement. The only time that had happened to an apprentice when she was here, they had thrown a feast for him. Even a lot of the more reclusive mages had come out and drank wine and partied. Apparently, most apprentices studied for years before they were able to do that. Now she wondered how much of the time studying was really spent cleaning, but still. Apparently, it was a big accomplishment and a good excuse to celebrate. Of course, they didn't have the food for a feast, but she was still satisfied.

The fourth cage was larger, though. Instead of just going for it, she studied the current circle around it and made a note of the changes from the previous one. There was a lot, but they were similar for the most part, and if you didn't take a closer look, you wouldn't even notice. She looked around, hoping she could find a paper to take some notes and do some math. But there was nothing nearby, so she just walked forward and went for it. It was really not that much of a risk. If she really couldn't get it and her master refused to help, she could always go downstairs and find some more resources. She'd have some time before the demon woke up. Besides, the circle was almost dead anyways.

It was tricky, but eventually, she got it. Master let out an encouraging cheer. She looked down at Void by her feet and smiled. The recognition was something that she wasn't used to. When she worked with her father, praise had been scarce at best, and cleaning wasn't exactly highly valued in the mage college. She took a second to celebrate before moving on to the next cage.

There were still several cages to go, and she was pretty certain she wouldn't have enough salt to finish all of them. Still, she could make some decent progress here and now. And she'd come back tomorrow when she had stocked up on salt to better explore the rest of this floor. Overall she didn't think she could ask for much more when it came to securing the rest of the castle.

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